Vegetarians, do you want to eat yummy burgers but don't want to harm
a living being? Soon, you'll be able to have your cow and eat it too.
Here comes the $350,000 vatburger:

Down the hall, in a lab with incubators filled with clear plastic containers
holding a pinkish liquid, a technician was tending to the delicate task
of growing the tens of billions of cells needed to make the burger,
starting with a particular type of cell removed from cow necks obtained
at a slaughterhouse. [...]

His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle
tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said
that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.”
[...]

But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf
serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually
would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin.
And the burger was created at phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros,
or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so far has remained anonymous.

Henry Fountain of The New York Times has the story: Link
(Image: Francois Lenoir)

Hahaha! I was just going to post the very same thing!So nice to see another Better Off Ted fan here!Ye Gods, I miss Phil & Lem!

[Lem begins feeding the "meat blob" as Phil looks on]Phil: "'Blobby!' Like 'Bobby', but with an 'L'."Lem: "Don't name it or you won't want to eat it. Remember 'Chester the Carrot'?"Phil: "Yeah. [sighs] I miss him."

I think the vegetarian / PETA angle is over emphasised. With a growing global population we need to feed everyone economically, if this food can be made cheaper, more humanely and more healthily than farmed meat then this is the best reason for doing it. Burgers for everyone!